Zuckerberg unveils new ‘superintelligence laboratory’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced the formation of Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), a new division dedicated to building AI systems that surpass human capabilities.

Mark Zuckerberg said Monday that he's creating Meta Superintelligence Labs, which will be led by some of his company's most recent hires, including Scale AI ex-CEO Alexandr Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

Zuckerberg said the new AI superintelligence unit, MSL, will house the company's various teams working on foundation models such as the open-source Llama software, products and Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research projects, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC.

Bloomberg first reported about the new unit.

Meta's co-founder and CEO has been on an AI hiring blitz as he faces fierce competition from rivals such as OpenAI and Google. Earlier in June, the company said it would hire Wang, now Meta's chief AI officer, and some of his colleagues as part of a $14.3 billion investment into Scale AI.

Meta also hired Friedman and his business partner, Daniel Gross, who was CEO of Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup created by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, CNBC earlier reported. Meta had attempted to buy Safe Superintelligence but was rebuffed by Sutskever.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a recent podcast that Meta was recruiting AI researchers from his company, offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million.

Meta technology chief Andrew Bosworth told CNBC's "Closing Bell Overtime" in an interview on June 20 that OpenAI was countering Meta's offers.

"The market is setting a rate here for a level of talent which is really incredible and kind of unprecedented in my 20-year career as a technology executive," Bosworth said.

Here is Zuckerberg's full internal memo released Monday:

As the pace of AI progress accelerates, developing superintelligence is coming into sight. I believe this will be the beginning of a new era for humanity, and I am fully committed to doing what it takes for Meta to lead the way. Today I want to share some details about how we're organizing our AI efforts to build towards our vision: personal superintelligence for everyone.

We're going to call our overall organization Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). This includes all of our foundations, product, and FAIR teams, as well as a new lab focused on developing the next generation of our models.

Alexandr Wang has joined Meta to serve as our Chief AI Officer and lead MSL. Alex and I have worked together for several years, and I consider him to be the most impressive founder of his generation. He has a clear sense of the historic importance of superintelligence, and as co-founder and CEO he built ScaleAI into a fast-growing company involved in the development of almost all leading models across the industry.

Nat Friedman has also joined Meta to partner with Alex to lead MSL, heading our work on AI products and applied research. Nat will work with Connor to define his role going forward. He ran GitHub at Microsoft, and most recently has run one of the leading AI investment firms. Nat has served on our Meta Advisory Group for the last year, so he already has a good sense of our roadmap and what we need to do.

We also have several strong new team members joining today or who have joined in the past few weeks that I'm excited to share as well:

• Trapit Bansal -- pioneered RL on chain of thought and co-creator of o-series models at OpenAI.



• Shuchao Bi -- co-creator of GPT-4o voice mode and o4-mini. Previously led multimodal post-training at OpenAI.



• Huiwen Chang -- co-creator of GPT-4o's image generation, and previously invented MaskGIT and Muse text-to-image architectures at Google Research



• Ji Lin -- helped build o3/o4-mini, GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.5, 4o-imagegen, and Operator reasoning stack.



• Joel Pobar -- inference at Anthropic. Previously at Meta for 11 years on HHVM, Hack, Flow, Redex, performance tooling, and machine learning.



• Jack Rae -- pre-training tech lead for Gemini and reasoning for Gemini 2.5. Led Gopher and Chinchilla early LLM efforts at DeepMind.



• Hongyu Ren -- co-creator of GPT-4o, 4o-mini, o1-mini, o3-mini, o3 and o4-mini. Previously leading a group for post-training at OpenAI.



• Johan Schalkwyk -- former Google Fellow, early contributor to Sesame, and technical lead for Maya.



• Pei Sun -- post-training, coding, and reasoning for Gemini at Google Deepmind. Previously created the last two generations of Waymo's perception models.



• Jiahui Yu -- co-creator of o3, o4-mini, GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o. Previously led the perception team at OpenAI, and co-led multimodal at Gemini.



• Shengjia Zhao -- co-creator of ChatGPT, GPT-4, all mini models, 4.1 and o3. Previously led synthetic data at OpenAI.

I'm excited about the progress we have planned for Llama 4.1 and 4.2. These models power Meta AI, which is used by more than 1 billion monthly actives across our apps and an increasing number of agents across Meta that help improve our products and technology. We're committed to continuing to build out these models.

In parallel, we're going to start research on our next generation of models to get to the frontier in the next year or so. I've spent the past few months meeting top folks across Meta, other AI labs, and promising startups to put together the founding group for this small talent-dense effort. We're still forming this group and we'll ask several people across the AI org to join this lab as well.

Meta is uniquely positioned to deliver superintelligence to the world. We have a strong business that supports building out significantly more compute than smaller labs. We have deeper experience building and growing products that reach billions of people. We are pioneering and leading the AI glasses and wearables category that is growing very quickly. And our company structure allows us to move with vastly greater conviction and boldness. I'm optimistic that this new influx of talent and parallel approach to model development will set us up to deliver on the promise of personal superintelligence for everyone.

We have even more great people at all levels joining this effort in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. I'm excited to dive in and get to work.

Israeli strike kills 18 Palestinians at food aid site in Gaza

A mourner during the funeral of Palestinians who, according to the Gaza health ministry, were killed in the strike in Deir al-Balah on Thursday. Photograph: Ramadan Abed/Reuters

An Israeli strike hit a street in central Gaza where witnesses said a crowd of people were getting bags of flour from a Palestinian police unit that had confiscated the goods from gangs looting aid convoys. Hospital officials said 18 people were killed.

Efforts by the United Nations to distribute the food have been plagued by armed gangs looting trucks and by crowds of desperate people offloading supplies from convoys.

The strike in the central town of Deir al-Balah appeared to target members of Sahm, a security unit tasked with stopping looters and cracking down on merchants who sell stolen aid at high prices. The unit was part of Gaza's Hamas-led Interior Ministry but included members of other factions.

Eighteen people have been killed in an Israeli strike targeting Palestinian police distributing flour in a market in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, medical officials have said.

The reported strike, on Thursday afternoon, is the latest in a series of air attacks, shootings and bombardment by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that has killed hundreds of desperate civilians seeking aid in the devastated Palestinian territory.

It appears to have targeted members of a security force set up by the Hamas-led interior ministry to target looters and merchants who sell stolen aid at high prices.

The unit, known as Sahm, or Arrow, confiscates stolen aid which it then distributes. Witnesses said many of the casualties were ordinary civilians who had gathered to receive sacks of flour from a warehouse near the Birka crossroads in the northern part of Deir al-Balah.

The dead included a child and at least seven Sahm members, according to the nearby al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, where casualties were taken.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Food has become extremely scarce in Gaza since a tight blockade on all supplies was imposed by Israel throughout March and April, threatening many of the 2.3 million people who live there with a “critical risk of famine”.

A horrific scene

Witnesses said the Sahm unit was distributing bags of flour and other goods confiscated from looters and corrupt merchants, drawing a crowd when the strike hit.

Video of the aftermath showed bodies, several torn, of multiple young men in the street with blood splattering on the pavement and walls of buildings. The dead included a child and at least seven Sahmt members, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where casualties were taken.

Relatives of Palestinians killed in Israeli army strikes wait for their burials at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, June 26, 2025. (Jehad Alshrafi)

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel has accused the militant Hamas group of stealing aid and using it to prop up its rule in the enclave. Israeli forces have repeatedly struck Gaza's police, considering them a branch of Hamas.

An association of Gaza's influential clans and tribes said Wednesday (local time) they have started an independent effort to guard aid convoys to prevent looting. The National Gathering of Palestinian Clans and Tribes said it helped escort a rare shipment of flour that entered northern Gaza that evening.

It was unclear, however, if the association had coordinated with the UN or Israeli authorities. The World Food Programme did not immediately respond to requests for comment by The Associated Press.

"We will no longer allow thieves to steal from the convoys for the merchants and force us to buy them for high prices," Abu Ahmad al-Gharbawi, a figure involved in the tribal effort, told the AP.

Accusations from Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz in a joint statement Wednesday accused Hamas of stealing aid that is entering northern Gaza and called on the Israeli military to plan to prevent it.

Palestinians carry humanitarian aid packages near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution centre. (Source: Associated Press)

The National Gathering slammed the statement, saying the accusation of theft was aimed at justifying the Israeli military's "aggressive practices". It said aid was "fully secured" by the tribes, which it said were committed to delivering the supplies to the population.

The move by tribes to protect aid convoys brings yet another player in an aid situation that has become fragmented, confused and violent, even as Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinians struggle to feed their families.

Throughout the more than 20-month-old war, the UN led the massive aid operation by humanitarian groups providing food, shelter, medicine and other goods to Palestinians even amid the fighting. The UN and other aid groups say that when significant amounts of supplies are allowed into Gaza, looting and theft dwindles.

Israel, however, seeks to replace the UN-led system, saying Hamas has been siphoning off large amounts of supplies from it, a claim the UN and other aid groups deny.

Israel has backed an American private contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has started distributing food boxes at four locations, mainly in the far south of Gaza for the past month.

Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the hubs, moving through Israeli military zones where witnesses say Israeli troops regularly open fire with heavy barrages to control the crowds.

Health officials say hundreds of people have been killed and wounded. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots.

Palestinians line up to receive bags of flour distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, June 26, 2025.

Palestinians line up to receive bags of flour distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, June 26, 2025. (Source: Associated Press)

A trickle of aid

Israel has continued to allow a smaller number of aid trucks into Gaza for UN distribution. The World Health Organization said it had been able to deliver its first medical shipment into Gaza since March 2, with nine trucks bringing blood, plasma and other supplies to Nasser Hospital, the biggest hospital still functioning in southern Gaza.

In Gaza City, large crowds gathered at an aid distribution point to receive bags of flour from the convoy that arrived the previous evening, according to photos taken by a cameraman collaborating with the AP.

Hiba Khalil, a mother of seven, said she can't afford looted aid that is sold in markets for astronomical prices and was relieved to get flour for the first time in months.

"We've waited for months without having flour or eating much and our children would always cry," she said.

Another woman, Umm Alaa Mekdad, said she hoped more convoys would make it through after struggling to deal with looters.

Iran may halt IAEA ties after Israeli assault, 51 killed in Gaza

Mourners were seen out the front of the Al-Shifa hospital after violence at a nearby aid distribution centre. (Reuters: Mahmoud Issa)

Iran’s parliament passes bill to suspend cooperation with UN’s IAEA, as Israel’s assault on Gaza continues, killing at least 51 people today.

Sources at hospitals in the Gaza Strip give us this updated death toll, adding that at least 14 of them were killed today near aid distribution centres.

The killing of Palestinian aid seekers, once met with shock and international condemnation as Israeli-backed aid sites opened late last month, has now become a daily occurrence, as the starving population remains desperate to get any food aid that they can, even at the cost of their safety.

Israeli forces have issued new evacuation warnings for parts of Gaza after another day of bloodshed in which at least 51 people are reported to have died.

At least 21 of those killed were trying to reach an aid distribution site in the central Gazan city of Nuseirat, according to an official at a local hospital.

Palestinians remain under the threat of further clashes between Israel and Hamas despite a ceasefire with Iran. (AP: Abdel Kareem Hana)

Marwan Abu Naser, of the Al-Awda Hospital, said a further 146 people were injured by gunfire as crowds tried to reach the centre.

Israel's military said that a gathering overnight was identified adjacent to forces operating in Gaza's central Netzarim Corridor, and it was reviewing reports of casualties.

The United Nations rejects the GHF delivery system as inadequate, dangerous, and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules. Israel says it is needed to prevent the Hamas militants it is fighting from diverting aid deliveries.

The Palestinian Islamist group denies doing so.

Separately, 10 other people were killed by an Israeli air strike on a house in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City.

A further 11 were killed by Israeli gunfire in the southern city of Khan Younis, medics said, raising the day's toll to at least 40.

Iran's parliament approves bill on suspending cooperation with IAEA

Iran's parliament approved a bill on Wednesday to suspend cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, state-affiliated news outlet Nournews reported. The move follows an air war with Israel in which Iran's longtime enemy said it wanted to prevent Tehran developing a nuclear weapon.

The bill, which must be approved by Iran's unelected Guardian Council to become law, stipulates that any future inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would need approval by the Supreme National Security Council.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf was quoted by state media as also saying Iran would accelerate its civilian nuclear programme.

Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons and says an IAEA resolution this month declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations paved the way for Israel's attacks.

Qalibaf was quoted as saying the IAEA had refused even to appear to condemn the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities and "has put its international credibility up for sale."

He said that "for this reason, the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran will suspend its cooperation with the Agency until the security of the nuclear facilities is guaranteed, and move at a faster pace with the country's peaceful nuclear programme."

Parliament's national security committee approved the bill's general outline this week and the committee's spokesperson said the bill would suspend the installation of surveillance cameras, inspections and filing of reports to the IAEA.

The IAEA did not immediately comment on the Iranian parliament's approval of the bill. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday he was seeking the return of inspectors to Iranian sites including the plants where it was enriching uranium until Israel launched strikes on June 13.

The full extent of the damage done to nuclear sites during the Israeli attacks and U.S. bombing of underground Iranian nuclear facilities is not yet clear.

"I think that our view on our nuclear programme and the non-proliferation regime will witness changes, but it is not possible to say in what direction," Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told Qatar's Al-Araby Al-Jadeed this week.

Israel-Iran truce holds - Israeli forces kill 25 in Gaza

Iran-Israel ceasefire: Victory claims, US strikes & what’s next for diplomacy?

Israeli forces and drones opened fire toward hundreds of people waiting for aid trucks in central Gaza early Tuesday, killing at least 25 people, Palestinian witnesses and hospitals said.

Israeli forces have begun to tear down a home in the Palestinian town of Hizma, near Jerusalem, according to the Jerusalem governorate.

Footage shared by the governorate and verified by Al Jazeera shows an Israeli bulldozer tearing into the home’s walls. The governorate says the owner received no prior warning.

The Awda hospital in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp, which received the victims, said the Palestinians were waiting for the trucks on the Salah al-Din Road south of Wadi Gaza.

During a raid in Shu’fat Camp near Jerusalem early this morning, Israeli forces fired shots that hit a 66-year-old woman in the head, killing her, according to the Wafa news agency.

Wafa named the woman as Zahia Judah al-Obaidi.

“It was a massacre,” said Ahmed Halawa. He said tanks and drones fired at people, “even as we were fleeing. Many people were either martyred or wounded”.

Hossam Abu Shahada, another eyewitness, said drones were flying over the area, watching the crowds first, then there was gunfire from tanks and drones as people were moving eastward. He described a “chaotic and bloody” scene as people were attempting to escape.

He said he saw at least three people lying on the ground motionless and many others wounded as he fled the site.

The Awda hospital said another 146 Palestinians were wounded. Among them were 62 in critical condition, who were transferred to other hospitals in central Gaza, it said.

In the central town of Deir al-Balah, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said it received the bodies of six people who were killed in the same incident.

Palestinian witnesses and health officials say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowds seeking desperately needed food, killing hundreds of people in recent weeks. The military says it has fired warning shots at people it said approached its forces in a suspicious manner.

Explosive kills 7 Israeli soldiers in Gaza inside an armored vehicle, military says

Seven Israeli soldiers were killed Tuesday in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis when their armored vehicle was struck by an explosive, an Israeli military official said Wednesday.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, said six of the soldiers’ names had been cleared for publication, while one was still being kept confidential.

Displaced Palestinians live in a tent camp in Gaza City, Monday, June 23, 2025.

It was a particularly deadly incident for Israel's military inside Gaza. Over 860 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the the war began with the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack — including more than 400 during the fighting inside Gaza.

Also in the area of Khan Younis area, one soldier was seriously wounded Tuesday by weapons fire, the military said.

Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said on its Telegram channel it had ambushed Israeli soldiers taking cover inside a residential building in southern Gaza Strip.

Some of the soldiers were killed and other injured after they were targeted by a Yassin 105 missile and another missile south Khan Younis, Hamas said. Al-Qassam fighters then targeted the building with machine guns.

It was not immediately clear whether the two incidents were the same.

The deadly attack came as the Palestinian death toll inside Gaza crossed the 56,000 mark.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Tuesday that Israel’s 21-month military operation in Gaza has killed 56,077 people.

Hamas in its 2023 attack on southern Israel killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 others hostage. Many hostages have been released by ceasefire or other agreements.

The death toll is by far the highest in any round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants but says more than half of the dead were women and children.

The ministry said the dead include 5,759 who have been killed since Israel resumed fighting on March 18, shattering a two-month ceasefire.

No agreement as of now, Tehran warns - despite Trump's announcement

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has denied claims by US President Donald Trump that his country has agreed to a ceasefire with Israel.

As US President Donald Trump claims a ceasefire has been achieved between Iran and Israel on Monday, Tehran has denied the claim. Iran has stated it did not receive any ceasefire proposal from the US which calls for a truce. Meanwhile, Israel has stayed silent on the ceasefire claim and is yet to comment on its implementation.

Taking to X, Iranian foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi stated that there is "no agreement as of now."

"As of now, there is NO "agreement" on any ceasefire or cessation of military operations. However, provided that the Israeli regime stops its illegal aggression against the Iranian people no later than 4 am Tehran time, we have no intention to continue our response afterwards. The final decision on the cessation of our military operations will be made later," he wrote.

As Iran has repeatedly made clear: Israel launched war on Iran, not the other way around.

As of now, there is NO "agreement" on any ceasefire or cessation of military operations. However, provided that the Israeli regime stops its illegal aggression against the Iranian people no…

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) June 24, 2025

Shortly after this tweet, the foreign minister shared statement saying that the ceasefire in Tehran took effect from 4 AM local time.

“The military operations of our powerful Armed Forces to punish Israel for its aggression continued until the very last minute, at 4am. Together with all Iranians, I thank our brave Armed Forces who remain ready to defend our dear country until their last drop of blood, and who responded to any attack by the enemy until the very last minute,” Araghchi wrote on X.

While Israeli officials have stated that Israel is on board with the ceasefire, an official reaction from the country is awaited. As per Hebrew media, Israeli officials have stated the prime minister Netanyahu is on board with Trump's ceasefire plan as long as “Iran vows to stop its missile attacks."

As per an AP report, the Israeli military declined to comment on Trump’s statement and the office of the Israeli PM is yet to respond.

Russia strikes more Ukrainian military training sites - Defense Of Minister Of Russia

©Russian Defense Ministry

Russian forces have conducted strikes on two sites used by Kiev to train newly mobilized troops, the Defense Ministry said. The announcement follows the resignation of a senior Ukrainian military commander, who criticized what he described as a lack of accountability for such incidents.

Ukraine’s armed forces rely on compulsory conscription to bolster their ranks, typically sending draftees to remote training facilities for basic instruction before deploying them to the front.

According to the Russian military, Iskander missile strikes recently targeted two such facilities.

One strike, near the Ukrainian city of Sumy, reportedly resulted in up to 100 casualties and destroyed as many as 14 military vehicles, the ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The second strike, reported on Sunday, hit an area under Kiev’s control in Russia’s Kherson Region, the ministry said. This operation involved an Iskander missile equipped with a cluster warhead that allegedly killed around 70 Ukrainian troops while destroying more than 10 vehicles.

Ukraine’s military confirmed the attack on a training site but reported a significantly lower toll – three soldiers killed and 14 wounded.

In early June, Ukrainian General Mikhail Drapaty resigned as commander of the Land Forces following a similar deadly incident. In a social media post, he condemned what he called a culture of impunity within the military leadership regarding troop losses.

According to Ukraine’s Suspilne news outlet, a Russian strike killed at least 12 Ukrainian soldiers and injured 60 others on June 1. Authorities in Kiev did not disclose the exact location, but the report, citing anonymous sources, indicated it may have occurred in the Dnepropetrovsk Region.

Around the same time, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had struck the Novomoskovsky training ground in that region.

Days later, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky appointed Drapaty to oversee all frontline operations as part of a broader reshuffle in military leadership, assigning a different official to supervise conscript training.

In a report on Saturday, the Financial Times said that the newly appointed commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, Brigadier General Gennady Shapovalov, has been tasked with reforming the “unpopular” forced mobilization and training system.

Ukraine declared general mobilization in 2022, barring most men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country. In 2024, Kiev tightened conscription laws and lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 in response to mounting battlefield losses. The mobilization campaign has sparked numerous violent confrontations between draft officers and unwilling conscripts, while many have attempted to flee the country despite serious personal risks.